Gene Simmons reveals Kiss was ignored shooting an iconic album cover on the NYC streets: ‘Not even looking at us twice’

nypost.com:

Kiss suited up to shoot the iconic cover of the band’s 1975 album “Dressed To Kill” on the southwest corner of 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, there were no stylists or tailors involved.“I did not own a suit or a tie, so I had to borrow our manager at the time Bill Aucoin’s suit,” Kiss co-frontman Gene Simmons, 75, exclusively told The Post.“He was a much smaller man … So I put on his suit and nothing fits.

If you look at the album cover, the sleeves were short, and the pants didn’t go all the way down.”Plus, Simmons had to finagle his footwear from one of his bandmates.“I didn’t have dress shoes,” he said, “so [Kiss guitarist] Ace Frehley had a pair of white clogs that he used to walk around with, and for no reason at all, I put on the clogs that are on the cover.”It all made for a classic album cover in rock history that is revisited on a new audio walking tour of New York spots that shaped Kiss and the group’s third LP, which inspired generations to “Rock and Roll All Nite” after it was released 50 years ago, on March 19, 1975.Along with Simmons and his Kiss co-frontman, Paul Stanley, photographer Bob Gruen — who shot the cover of “Dressed To Kill” — shares his makeup-covered memories in the 60-minute tour that takes you from 23rd and Eighth to Greenwich Village’s legendary Electric Lady Studios, where the LP was recorded.Gruen was shooting Kiss for a Creem magazine story — in which his photos would be used in a comic-book treatment on the band — and ended up taking the album cover pic.“It was just a whim.

I just thought we’d add another frame to the comic,” Gruen said. “So it almost wasn’t even part of the script, but it was just an idea.